A thought...

If Carly Fiorina, who almost ruined HP before parachuting out with an eight figure pay day, is elected to represent California in the U.S. Senate she will do to the country what she did to HP...loot it and leave it for dead.

Song of the Day...September 22, 2010.

I was fortunate to see this guitarist, one of the all-time greats imho, twice in the past 2 years...Robin Trower. He is 65 years young and still going strong. The song in this video was recorded live, in my neck of the woods, New Haven, CT, in 1977...

Na na na-na, na na na-na, hey, hey, hey goodbye!!!

It was announced yesterday that Larry Summers, the head of the Obama administration's National Economic Council, is leaving at the end of the year. I say good riddance. Obama's economic team is the main reason the the Democrats are going to get hammered in the midterms. Summers was a main reason that unemployment was not adequately addressed and hence the electoral hammering that is about to happen. They had, and still have, way too much faith in the financial sector to do what is right for this country. The financial sector only care about themselves, and their collective bottom lines, not the general welfare of our country. But already the political right, and the financial sector, are clamoring for a replacement who is more business friendly. More business friendly than Bob Rubin acolyte Larry Summers? What do they want? To have Obama dig up Milton Friedman from the grave and reanimate him like Dr. Frankenstein? We need someone far more keynesian in their philosophy, like Paul Krugman or Robert Reich, for the job, though I am pretty sure Krugman has no interest, with deflation being the next big worry on the path we're on. Instead I am expecting some neo-liberal replacement who is closer to Milton Friedman than he/she is to Larry Summers never mind to either Krugman or Reich.

But meanwhile Summers is gone and that makes me very happy...time for a bit of gloating!!!

Vince Cable to the rescue?

While following politics in the U.S. is a passion of mine it is not limited to U.S. politics. I also follow what is going on in the U.K. Because the Tories did not gain enough seats to allow them to govern on their own they were forced to form a coalition with the far left Lib-Dems. This resulted with many Lib-Dems being in the government. One of them is Vince Cable, who ended up becoming Business Secretary in the Cameron government.

Well it seems Mr. Cable caused a row recently with his speech to a Lib-Dem conference when he allegedly "attacked capitalism". Some on the right have even characterized his comments as "Marxist". Well let's take a look at what he had to say;

"On banks, I make no apology for attacking spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow [general secretary of the RMT union] could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies, while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer."

"We need successful business. But let me quite clear. The government's agenda is not one of laissez faire. Markets are often irrational or rigged. So I am shining a harsh light into the murky world of corporate behaviour."

"Why should good companies be destroyed by short-term investors looking for a speculative killing, while their accomplices in the City make fat fees? Capitalism takes no prisoners and it kills competition where it can, as Adam Smith explained over 200 years ago,"

That all seems fairly reasonable to me. Why should one sector, the financial sector, be permitted to ride roughshod over an entire economy? In the U.K. the financial sector is known as "The City" as here in the U.S. it is refered to as "Wall Street". They were none too happy with Mr. Cable's comments and labeled him as extreme and marxist. But those claims don't hold water. Cable is clearly pro-market but not pro-corporate. And he is right, in both the U.K. and the U.S., the financial sectors are allowed to hold too much sway over the whole economy which results in a corporatist economy, which is anti-competitive, and not a truly free, and competitive, market. But of course the corporations don't want to release the stranglehold they have on the global economy...though they should be forced to.

It seems difficult for many politicians to stand up and make the case that what we have now in no way resembles truly free markets, because of the undo influence of the financial sector has over our governments. As long as we allow the interests of the wealthiest to trump everything, including country and the people, western civilization will be in decline. Thank God at least there is one person left in the world today willing to stand up and speak the truth to power, and he goes by the name Vince Cable.

I am the eggman, I am the eggman, I am the walrus...

A story on NBC News tonight alarmed me. It seems this year, because of the unusual warmth, it was reported that the polar ice has been greatly reduced. So much so many of the walrus, not having their usual places to hang out, pack ice, have made their way to land at Point Lay Alaska.

Earlier this week M.J. Rosenberg at Talking Points Memo made a post about the recent tornado in Queens, NY, arguing that is was "proof" that global warming was real. I pointed out to M.J. that as minimal as it is this is tornado season in the northeast U.S. And it is no more proof that global warming is real as the 3 blizzards in the mid-atlantic last winter "prove" that global warming/climate change isn't happening, as some on Fox News claimed in the aftermath of the storms. If you want tangible proof the NBC News walrus story and this one about stressed out coral reefs across the globe are better examples to use.

Meanwhile to try to send out some good vibes for the Walrus which is under some considerable duress...some music.

Song of the day...September 20, 2010.

To go along with my earlier post today...Pink Floyd doing One of These Days.




The only line of the song , which is barely audible in the middle of the song, is "One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces".

A plastic land full of plastic people...

What is wrong with our fair land? Despite the economic hardships of our the Great Recession the US remains one of the wealthiest nations in the world. One where unemployment is hovering around 10%, where vast swaths of the population cannot afford to have health care, where one in seven now live in poverty as we piss away billions of dollars of taxpayer money on 2 ill-advised wars and where the upper 2% have about 20%-30% of all of the wealth.

So what can, or should, we do to address what ails our country right now? Well first and foremost by tackling the main reason for our problems, the staggering wealth inequality in America by returning us to the tax rates which were in place during the Clinton years. But the wealthy are not happy at all with that plan...in fact they are downright angry about it. Along with anything else which they perceive as an attack on their collective stations in life. They feel they've earned what they have. Earned by killing good paying American jobs, earned by bribing, errrrr donating money to, our elected officials to help their, and only their, bottom lines, earned by the reckless greedy behavior which resulted in over $1T taxpayers dollars having to be spent to preserve what the greedy had "earned". In fact they are so dead set against anything being done to them that they are warning that unless they are allowed to keep doing well they will make sure nobody does well, not that any of us out of their circles are doing anything even remotely resembling "well".

Well at least the administration has the rest of our collective best interests at heart. Just as Obama showed he had when he trekked to the back country of Greenwich, where the median income was a paltry $117,000 per household, to hold a $30,000 per plate fundraiser at the impoverished Conyers Farm Estate. While there he mocked those of us who feel more should be done for us instead of for them by characterizing us as people who "see the glass as half empty". He showed where his allegiance is, it is with "them".

But the wealthy want to take no chances. So they have sunk millions of dollars into an astroturf Tea Party campaign through fronts like Dick Armey's and David Koch's Freedom Works. They have convinced a more than an insignificant portion of the population, through their propagandist media outlets like billionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., that it is in their best interests to be against their best interests and the only freedom they should want is the freedom for the wealthy to have even more.

So here we sit at the crossroads as a nation, ignorant and intentionally misinformed, poised to head down history's rabbit hole just so the very few can have it all...

Song of the day...September 9,2010

I just saw these guys, Fu Manchu, in Cambridge MA last Friday, September 3rd 2010. They are celebrating 20 years as a band. They have never had better sound. If you get a chance check them out.




Rock on...g'night.

Your China Strategy?

According to this New York Times article it seems many manufacturing CEO's want to see our government more involved the manufacturing industry "along the lines of China, Germany or Japan". It seems these CEO's cannot raise capital to expand their US manufacturing operations because potential financiers want to know what their "China Strategy" is, or how they plan to create jobs abroad instead of the US. The CEO's would like the US government to step in and provide them the capital to expand the US based manufacturing operations since the marketplace refuses to do so. So what was the administration's response to this? Ron Bloom, the administration's special advisor to boost manufacturing, said the administration would like to see manufacturing growth in the US but refused to go as far as agreeing that the government could/should step in and fill the financing void. As usual uninspired and tepid leadership from the Obama administration. As Mr. Bloom said in conclusion “We have been insufficiently committed to manufacturing for a long time, we are not going to fix it in an afternoon.” We're not going to fix that in an afternoon? It doesn't appear they intend to fix it during their first term, even with unemployment hovering around 10% and manufacturers begging for capital to create the US jobs they are ready to make available.

When both labor and management want help from the government to spur growth in the manufacturing sector and the administration refuses to take the steps that everybody but the investment bankers and China want to see it is a fair assumption that the administration isn't very interested in seeing those jobs created in the US despite any claims to the contrary. It also reinforces what I have been saying that Obama and his team are too close to Wall Street and investment bankers when it comes to doing what is right for the country.

I am becoming less and less impressed with this administration each and every day. Their only plan seems to be to protect the wealth of the people who destroyed our economy and want to see less jobs being created in the US.

Goodbye TPMCafe...

Well an era is coming to an end. As of tomorrow all of the reader blogs at Talking Points Memo will be shut down. This will be a very sad day for me as TPM is a place I have spent a large part of the last 6 on-line years of my life at.

I have made many great friends there including the late Kenneth Thomas II, aka "PsuedoCyAnts". Some people are going to post at dagblog, others at Firedoglake. I am not sure what my plans are for blogging outside of my little space here. My business is failing, and I am close to going into bankruptcy because of this miserable economy that no one in power seems willing to do anything about. I found out my mom has cancer and me and my family are dealing with that. And I am just down in the dumps that my on-line political home, one many of us there helped build, is kicking our family to the curb.

For now I am just basically going to be here posting any random thoughts as they cross my mind and remembering back to better times on almost every front. Thanks to all my many friends at TPM and the Monster Magnet forum. I love you all but I am not in a good place and really need to work out all the shit going on in my life on my own right now. I appreciate the words of encouragement and kind wishes. But right now the only person who can solve my problems is me.